Description

“The Cartel” is a documentary film about corruption in American public education. This DVD edition offers special bonus segments not available elsewhere.

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Only 35 percent of American high school seniors are proficient readers. Only 23 percent are proficient in math. Nationwide, only 74 percent of ninth graders graduate within four years-and that number drops to about 50 percent for black and Hispanic students. Twelve percent of American high schools are “dropout factories”-schools where less than 60 percent of freshmen even make it to their senior year. It comes as no surprise, then, that America lags far behind other developed countries when it comes to schooling: Among large industrialized countries, America ranks last in educational effectiveness-despite spending the most.

The conventional wisdom says that our schools could be dramatically improved with better funding. If we would only “invest in education,” the argument goes, our children would have a better future-particularly in urban areas, where leaky roofs, under-qualified teachers, and outdated textbooks are all too common

And so the last few decades have brought an explosion of education spending, enthusiastically approved by local school boards and state legislatures and generally supported by taxpayers. That’s the moral cover under which our public school system wastes and steals billions of dollars every year.

This costly, unconscionable failure forms the subject of “The Cartel.”

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This DVD disc is licensed only for home viewing. Use of this product for public screenings of any kind is a violation of U.S. and international copyright laws.